Carla Fernandez and Lennon Flowers are putting the final touches to preparations for a dinner party, chopping vegetables and dressing salads. It’s a ‘pot-luck’ candlelit supper on a Thursday evening and the 10 guests, mostly in their 20s and 30s, arrive laden with platters of food. On the menu: salmon, lentils, a sumptuous cheese board, decadent brownies – and death. You’d never know it from the animated chatter and clink of wine glasses, but the common denominator for this diverse group of people is bereavement.
Fernandez and Flowers are friends who run a thriving non-profit company, The Dinner Party, which they founded five years ago with the goal of connecting people dealing with the loss of a parent or another family member – a subject that is still largely taboo – so they can talk unreservedly about their grief…